Filtering solution for slow/high traffic filters

[Holly_Benjamin]

Hello guys, 

Wondering if anyone has any solutions to help with a filter or set of filters or to make our workflow more robust - currently dealing with a filter that takes 2-5 minutes to load in Workload Balancer. 

Our resourcing team need to be able to filter any and all tasks set to "New" that are unassigned in the system to resource them to someone when required.

The filter is currently looking at the following either stacked in separate filters, or combined into one filter:

* Projects that are not complete/cancelled. 

* Tasks that are unassigned (as it's via the top section of Workload balancer anyway)

* Tasks that are 'New' (default status is 'Not Ready', and users manually move to a New state when ready to pick up)

* Tasks that are assigned to potentially 34 different role types across Photographers/Stylists and similar - these filters can't really be split into smaller chunks as whole projects need to be assessed alongside other full projects. 

I recognise I'm trying to filter through a lot of things and criteria, but thought filtering out to only show live projects (i.e. not complete or cancelled) and tasks assigned to a certain role and only specific status would make my filtering quicker and more condensed. 

We did originally set our filters just to look for unassigned tasks within a single project status but this required our projects to keep moving back and forth to different statuses when they need to be resourced which isn't reflective of our progress on projects due to working with phases. 

Open to suggestions!

[skyehansen]

I have questions.

1) I see four bullet points, so some combination of four filters (including all four) is what I am guessing you're talking about? Is there any combination that loads faster than the others? e.g. is it the 4th bullet point that is slowing everything down?

2) You don't discuss filtering in users at all -- other than by the role. Are these filters simply running across every user in your company? (if so, how many users is this?)

[Holly_Benjamin]

Hi, yes thank you for the reply! 

It's the "Tasks that are 'New' and 'Tasks that are assigned to X roles' up to 34 that are causing the slow speed, with the roles one being most impacting. 

I can actually do without the Projects complete/cancelled status, but tried adding this to see if it would create a smaller pool of tasks/projects to filter first, but that doesn't make much different to load speeds. 

Yes correct - I'm just looking at roles in the workload balancer, not specific users as I'm only looking at roles unassigned to then be able to assign them to relevant staff members. 

[skyehansen]

could you post a screenshot of what that filter looks like? It's just easier if I don't have to guess.

I'm wondering if there's some other attribute you can go by that would make this faster. e.g. if you are searching on 34 Job Role IDs, maybe instead you can search on Job Role Description, and put the same keyword in all 34 job role descriptions. (e.g. Job Role Description contains ABC)

[Holly_Benjamin]

Yes sure - 

Screenshot of the filters using your suggestion (I really like the job role description thought and this was quick), although this view isn't pulling any data so I pulled a report with the same filters (I hope) and should be seeing some matching results in WLB. 

   

[skyehansen]

ok if I read this correctly, having a job role description filter sped up your report? Wondering how the speed is in workload balancer.

[Holly_Benjamin]

Sorry my response wasn't very clear - yes the job description seemed to make the WLB much quicker though it returned no results which seems to be in error. 

As I created the separate report with matching filters and returned the 3 lines in my screenshot. 

[skyehansen · Accepted solution]

that does seem weird. Have you considered / Are you able to submit a case to Support detailing the behavior?

[Holly_Benjamin]

Yes, I think this will be my next step - thank you for your advise. It's been very useful.